


uncertainty principle

by mercuria



Category: James Bond (Craig movies), Skyfall (2012) - Fandom
Genre: Dubious Consent, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-25
Updated: 2012-11-25
Packaged: 2017-11-19 11:29:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,706
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/572784
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mercuria/pseuds/mercuria
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Silva infiltrates MI6 to let Q know he’s in on the plan to leave him a trail of breadcrumbs-- and it suits him just fine.</p>
<p>Also, he’s got some time to kill before his aircraft departs.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>(Warnings for dubcon makeout situations.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	uncertainty principle

**Author's Note:**

> Because I felt this pairing had to exist. 
> 
> Thanks to Adiva, for being a wonderful hand-holder, sounding board, quick beta and meta analysis rambler. Also again, there's dubcon in here, so tread with caution if you find that upsetting!

Make all the jokes you like about computer nerds in the basement, MI6’s new location makes it _very_ difficult to tell what time it is. Q has a browser window open with the weather: Sundown at 4:27 pm, a dimming digital sun that gives way to murky, pixilated twilight. When dark arrives, he closes the window.

The trail of breadcrumbs has been left, Tanner’s gone to try to get in contact with M, and before Q rattles apart with nerves about this entire situation, he can’t resist another look at their security system. _His_ security system, that is, the one Silva so handily broke into.

_Youth is no guarantee of innovation_.

At the time he’d scoffed. You get prepared for banter around here, it’s what they breathe. Banter, adrenaline and whiskey. Now, the memory of the remark hits with an icy truth—or perhaps he’s thinking of the wrong line.

 

_NOT SUCH A CLEVER BOY_

 

Q’s laptop says 6:34 pm, an hour and a half into what was supposed to be a cursory examination of the system, when a distant door shuts.

Q has gotten distracted by Silva’s encryptions from earlier in the day, the Rubik’s cube that fights back. That was a layman’s turn of phrase, of course. In reality, a more elegant analogy is quantum theory: To observe the code is to change it.

Q thinks it’s almost a pity that the key ended up being simple enough for 007 to crack before he did. (The footsteps only register at the very back of his mind.) A very deterministic means of getting out of the whole programming tangle.

When the door behind him opens, Q calls, “Sorry Tanner, nothing yet. I think he took the bait, though.”

There’s a pause.

And someone emphatically not Tanner says, in a pleasant voice, “Better watch what he does with it, then.”

Q goes cold.

His gaze jerks to the monitor, looking for a hint of who’s behind him, but the screen—as he knew it would be—is pure black. Low reflectivity. His fingers feel slack, but his hand raises, poised to trigger the security-breach protocols for the _second time_ today—

Something behind him goes _click._

“I don’t think you want to do that.”

Q’s hand lowers slowly.

And Silva chuckles. 

“Maybe a little bit clever, after all.” He makes some noise in his throat, an appreciative _hm._ “Come on, turn around. Let me have a look at you.”

Maybe it’s just that he doesn’t want to shoot him in the back. Maybe he thinks there’s some advantage to—interrogating him, God, how does he warn Tanner? How does he warn M and 007? Q turns, and looks into a face he’s only seen via digital surveillance.

Silva does have a gun. A glance past him reveals a few more men with guns—masks on their faces, all taking strategic defensive positions around the empty floor. But even alone, Silva would be more than enough. Surveillance doesn’t give nearly enough warning about his size—he’s tall and broad and has hands that could snap Q’s neck like a matchstick—and right now, he’s smiling down at him with a measuring curiosity that chills him to the bone.

“Quartermaster,” he says pleasantly. “You look younger than your pictures. We’ll call you a lowercase q.”

Q’s throat feels like it’s closing up. All that makes it out is a tense cliché:

“What do you want?”

Silva makes another sound at the back of his throat, this one clucking disapproval.

“I’m on my way to get what I want,” he says. “Now I have to wait—not so easy. But then, I realize there’s somebody I have to see. Mama I’ve seen, Bond I’ve seen. But our new, clever Q—“

His free hand stretches towards him, and Q flinches, a full body seizing-up that ends in his elbow smacking the table. Silva’s eyebrows arch.

Gently, he tugs Q’s collar straight.

With a nod to the screen, the points of data blooming and collapsing, “I see you got my note.”

Q swallows. His elbow is ringing with pain.

All right. If he can just keep his head, stay cool—no reason to panic, just because the bloody brilliant, _bloody_ psychotic former agent who hacked into his security system has evidently stopped by for a chat.

“I’ve been studying the security breach from today,” he says.

“That’s all you’ve been up to?” Silva frowns broadly, for show. “You didn’t leave a trail to follow?” 

Internally, Q curses him, Bond, and himself in approximately that order. Of course Silva knows everything. Of _course_ he knows. But it’s fine, if he’s still going to follow them. It’s fine, nothing’s changed—

( _Except that you could come out of this alive,_ says a voice in Q’s head.

_Or he could kill you.)_

Schrodinger’s Quartermaster, stuck in the basement box.

“It was very helpful,” Silva assures him, a little too close. The modifier comes out emphatic, a purr: _verrry_. “Nice and neat.”

His fingertips brush Q’s collarbone, sending a jolt of nerves down his spine.

“You know, you and I have a lot in common,” Silva says friendlily. He shrugs, tilting his hand this way and that. “I’m a little smarter than you, maybe—“

Despite the direness of the situation, Q’s got to really struggle not to make a face at that.

“But that’s why she chose you, isn’t it. Neat clever programs to clean up her messes, compensate for her failures … set up her dominos to fall.”

“If you want to know why I got my job,” Q begins, surprising himself with how ludicrously level his tone is.

“No no.” Silva makes a casual gesture with his gun hand; it ends with Q staring down the barrel. “Not how you earned it. Why you’re _here_ —do you really share Bond’s mania for Queen and country?”

Q swallows. His gaze flickers between the gun and Silva’s too-wide smile.

He says, “Not exactly.”

Silva’s eyes flick over him, up to down. His smile never wavers.

“I understand,” he says. “You want to be the best. Flashy tricks, patriotism, pats on the back, all this is nice. But I know your work; you’re after something more.” For a man holding a gun inches from Q’s face, Silva can look surprisingly—earnest, or saintly, or maybe the word Q wants is ‘cultish.’

He murmurs, “I can help you.”

 

… Right then.

That’s a turn.

“I’m—sorry,” Q says, stammering slightly. “Are you—“

Silva flashes him a beneficent smile, eyebrows arching.

“Set yourself against me, I beat you every time,” he says with an innocent shrug. “But together …”

His lips curl.

“There’s so much we could accomplish.”

Q should, perhaps, be expecting it.

Don’t ask him _how_ ; he’s the genius here, after all. But when Silva’s fingers slide up his neck, Q doesn’t expect it in the least.

Perhaps it’s because he’s only one-half of the geniuses here.

His breath catches at the touch. Silva pauses, looking pleased, and strokes down to the hollow beneath his throat without taking his eyes off Q’s face.

In this moment, Q feels he’s made a fatal miscalculation.

“Busy boy,” Silva murmurs. “Doing her work. Have you thought about your own sins?”

His thumb comes to rest on his larynx; Q thinks dizzily of matchsticks again. The rest he sees with screen-capture distance: cold barrel of the gun digging into his side, dark shapes of men at the exits. 

Even if all other things were equal, which they aren’t, he couldn’t move a muscle.

“Hm,” Silva says absently. His smile is abruptly too close for Q to see, breath striking hot against his ear and neck. “It’s nobody’s first time around here anymore, is it? Very modern of you.”

Oh God.

“I, haven’t,” he manages, before Silva’s thumb presses in harshly.

“Shhh. It’s all right.” His lips brush his neck.

Q wants very badly to believe that his shudder is purely fear.

 

When that doesn’t convince, he then wants very badly to believe that his nerve endings and the stimulation thereof are not his fault. Scientifically true, perhaps, but the thought feels entirely irrelevant.

Against his neck, Silva keeps talking, the touch of his lips not kisses but impossible to read as anything else. “You’re the new generation … none of the old rats’ old prejudices.”

Warmth and wet up his neck, just beneath his ear.

Q’s not sure when he started shivering.

_Oh God—oh, God—_

“Please,” he says.

As soon as he’s said it, that feels like a miscalculation too.

All right, all right. Even if he can’t access MI6’s security protocols without getting shot, if he can keep Silva here—it’s time he’s not chasing M. It’s time. It could make a difference. It could be worth—

Silva laughs against his neck.

“You’re a lot of fun,” he murmurs, like a realization. “You should have come to Macau.”

There is clearly some screw that’s come unscrewed in Q’s brain, because he says distantly, “I hate to fly.”

“Mm.” Silva’s close enough that he can feel the shrug this time. A strong arm snakes around his waist, pulling him closer; in consequence, the gun digs more sharply into his ribs. “Pity.”

They stay like that a moment, Q’s eyes squinched shut. He doesn’t want to see it if Silva chooses now to shoot him.

If Silva chooses now to do anything else, he doesn’t want to see that either.

But all Silva does is turn his head, smack a kiss to Q’s cheek, and step back.

“Good boy,” he murmurs. “After I see mother again, I think I’ll come back for you.”

Q hears himself breathing harshly. His fingers curl over the table edge at his back.

This, he knows, is not going to happen. 007 will win, if for no other reason than 007 is cursed with a high level of entirely unwarranted luck.

He is terrified regardless.

“Later, then,” someone else says with his voice. “I’ll see you later.”

This doesn’t change the plan, he thinks, as Silva smiles at him and steps back, gun trained on him as he reaches the door. M and Bond are in position; they’ll be fine.

It doesn’t change the plan.

 

It doesn’t change anything.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Her Sinners, Saints](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1775476) by [PharaonicWolf](https://archiveofourown.org/users/PharaonicWolf/pseuds/PharaonicWolf)




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